My Hiking Origin Story, Part 1: The Camping Trip
In 2014 I was a completely different human. Living a reality that wasn’t mine, fenced in by a distorted version of truth I’d blindly accepted. Completely disconnected from my soul, and out of alignment with what made me truly happy.
When I moved to Boulder City, Nevada that same year, I was full of preconceived notions. I assumed I’d be subjecting myself to endless miles of arid desert landscape with scorching 113-degree summers, and entertainment that was only available in the form of mindless gambling, extravagant shows, and a curated selection of the world’s finest and priciest meals from celebrity chefs. Those aren’t all terrible things, but once you set your sights beyond the strip and onto locations like Lee Canyon, Red Rocks Canyon, or the 2,337 square miles of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, those preconceived notions get shattered.
However, my expectations of the Las Vegas area weren’t rewritten for years, and when they finally were it happened so abruptly it was borderline comical. It also represented the first of many pivotal flashpoints in my life; moments that served as wake-up calls.
By 2015 I was suffering from career burnout, depression, and a general disinterest in my daily life. Inundated with reviews and overextended from content obligations (which is indicative more of my enthusiasm and willingness to say “yes” than it is a complaint of things being dumped in my lap), I rapidly devolved from passionate to apathetic.
It wasn’t the work itself. I loved writing about games and PC tech at Forbes.
No, it was the peripheral ramifications; the things happening in the margins and at the bottom of the page. The disturbingly gleeful eagerness of the gaming “community” to shit on everything.
To praise your work when it reinforced their confirmation bias, and to call you a shill when it didn’t. To spill endless unpunctuated and grammatically baffling paragraphs insulting you because your opinion took a slightly different turn.
They don’t shoulder all the blame, though. The content creators make sure of that. At the time, it felt like the conversations happening in the game industry were becoming increasingly vitriolic, at times reminding me of TMZ rather than anything resembling journalism.
Looking beyond the community, beyond the creators, I had to tilt the mirror to show my own reflection. It turns out that years of being critical was destroying my childlike enjoyment of the medium.
It extends beyond that, though. It just didn’t feel like people were celebrating games anymore, instead preferring to attack them and the developers who devote their lives to creating them. Reveling in being offended by them.
We chose drowning in toxicity instead of swimming in fascination.
So I decided to take a vacation from games professionally and personally, and double down on PC tech coverage. My community had grown and evolved around stuff like DIY PC builds, so that’s what I focused on.
I was dismayed when the instantaneous mental improvement I expected never materialized. I was still burnt out. Partially from feeling like a pawn in an endless tug of war between tech giants and PR firms, partially from the endless Facebook notifications, email pitches, and phone calls. But mostly from how ridiculously accessible I’d made myself to the world.
Genesis 1: The Camping Trip
Genesis (je-nə-səs): the origin or coming into being of something
In April 2016 my brother Jer showed up to rescue me from myself. Calling him an outdoor enthusiast would be putting it mildly. We affectionately refer to him as a Dirtbag.
He’s held key roles at various outdoor retailers. Impromptu kayaking excursions and ice climbing trips are considered a daily norm in his world. He completed a lengthy NOLS course teaching wilderness survival and medicine. His Pitbull’s name is Yukon (but affectionately known as “Potato”). The gear inside his old van was more valuable than the vehicle itself by a factor of 20x. He can properly equip you for any adventure in any part of the world. And he has one hell of an epic beard.
Jer knows outdoor gear the way I know PC components and the way you know your lover’s breath.
His plan was to extract me from my fortress of tech and spend a weekend in the woods.
“No, not the camping you’re used to, because that’s not even camping,” he told me. “That’s just organized outdoor sleeping.”
My only memories of camping are decades-old, from locations like Yosemite’s Curry Village, in designated sites with noisy kids and nosy neighbors. This would be quite different. We were going to head up to Spring Mountains (locals call it Mt. Charleston), find a dirt road in a secluded area, and just wing it.
Spring Mountains National Recreation Area is 316,000 acres of meadows and mountains stretching from 3,000 feet of elevation to 11,918 feet. It connects to Humboldt-Toiyabe, the largest national forest in the lower 48 states. Most interesting is that it has its own micro-climate. We’re talking about a location only 50 minutes northwest of the heat and chaos of Las Vegas, that can be a cool and breezy 55 degrees when the strip is in the 90s. (Later that year, I would hike through this area in the show, after driving only 45 minutes from 81-degree Boulder City.)
Somewhere near 8000 feet on Forest Road 203, we unpacked the trunk of my silver Kia Rio and set up camp. Hammock, tent, Coleman stove, ice chest. Jer pitched the tent with speed and precision as I stood there jaw agape, laughing at how I could build a high-end gaming PC from scratch but couldn’t even spring a damn tent without poring over an instruction manual.
A fire had recently spread through this area, and the surrounding forest was littered with dead, dry wood which we’d scrounge for a fire. (It’s illegal to cut down living wood, so please don’t.)
The brothers, gathering dead wood for an epic fire (and trying to one-up each other)
We found a dried-up creek bed which looked like a Ponderosa Pine graveyard. Gnarled branches and entire small trees lay on the ground, but it was a beautiful sight. We hauled them up the hill and back into our campsite, and my brother set out making three distinct piles. Twigs and kindling for a starter, medium sized branches to build it up, and logs to last through the night.
Of course, those logs would need to be chopped into smaller, more manageable sizes. I volunteered, grabbing his axe and just cutting the crap out of the larger branches. I punctured the bark and started unleashing unexpectedly guttural roars as I drove closer and closer into the wood. No one except my brother could hear me. No one would care. Months and years of pent-up frustration and stress were exhumed with each downward swing.
Blisters formed. I did not care. My shoulder lodged painful complaints. I did not care. This was the most cathartic thing I had done in months.
We marveled at the snow-capped mountains in the near distance, and I quietly fantasized about scaling them. We observed several deer approach our camp, wait timidly, munch on something, and then quietly take their leave. We sipped on maple Bourbon, guzzled warm beers, and spoke openly about our highest hopes and darkest fears. We acted and felt 10 years younger than we were, gazed at the stars which weren’t swallowed by the light pollution of Las Vegas, and slept like the dead.
Fear of being disconnected quickly gave way to relief. I hadn’t been this relaxed in months, and I had tasted the overwhelming beauty of nature that was practically outside my doorstep.
That camping trip with my brother was merely what woke me up from my tech-induced sedentary slumber. It marked the beginning of the journey. But to understand the weight of what's next, I need to take you back in time, to 1994.
NEXT: A knee injury, suicidal ideation, and a painful lesson about never accepting the reality you're presented with.
Jason Evangelho
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